Mirrorred RAID Rebuild Failing

Hello,
I had a mirrored raid setup on 10.6.7, everything was working great for the last month, then today I went into disk utility and it said one drive failed. After checking the drive, there didn't seem to be any problem with its operation, so I can only assume it was a software/communication failure.
Clicking the rebuild button resulted in this error:
Rebuilding RAID set failed with the error:
POSIX reports: The operation couldn't be completed. Operation not permitted.
So I tried removing a disk, that also failed with the same error.
I then erased the failed drive which automatically removes it from the RAID configuration. Now when I try to add it back to the configuration I get the exact same error.
Has any experienced this issue and have any suggestions on how to get RAID back online?
Thanks in advance!
Michael

Thanks for your reply.
Yes, I am sure that the drives are working. I do not know what caused one of the drives to 'fail' as far as disk utility was concerned - but it was online when I checked it again.
I had issues while originally creating the RAID configuration, similar POSIX issues.
I have managed to get the configuration back online using the SoftRAID, but I am unable to create any new RAID configurations or modify existing ones using Disk Utility. Is it possible its an issue with POSIX and the drive USB drivers? Though I have tried with 3 or 4 different brand drives.
SoftRAID allows the drive set to be converted to a Disk Utility set after creating/repairing it - so thats what I have done for now.
I will try to setup/repair this all again once I have Lion installed and see if they fixed it in that version.
Any suggestions on how to get Disk Utility's RAID configuration on a Intel Core 2 Duo Mac Mini would be appreciated. I have filed a bug report with Apple as well. SoftRAID was a suggested alternative to a few other posts on the discussions for similar issues.
Michael

Similar Messages

How to recover data from failed drive that's part of mirrored raid

Hi Guys,
hope to get help from someone knowledgeable out there. I have a macpro and recently experienced a failed drive. I set up that failed drive as part of a mirrored raid, this set is not my primary drive and so my computer is stilling up and running but now am wondering how I access the data from the mirrored drive. Should the mirrored drive automatically mount on my desktop whereby I would be able to access the files? This is my first drive failure and I was under the impression having a mirror would duplicate my data and allow me to access it in situations like this. I'm a bit of novice in this area and not sure if the data is truly on the "mirror" or if there are things I need to do.
I launched disk utility and was able to see the mirrored drive and I selected "mount" drive but it would not mount; I then selected "verify" and got "unrecognizeable filesystem" Is this normal? Am I suppose do something to get access to the mirrored drive? Do I install a new drive in place of the failed drive and expect the raid to rebuild automatically whereby I then see the data?
Your help is much appreciated.

Even with a mirror, you still need a backup.
Along with Disk Utility, you still need 3rd party (TechTool Pro 5, Disk Warrior 4.1.1+).
And if you like to use RAID and esp mirror RAID, consider
http://www.softraid.com which is a step above (the pdf guide, manual you can download and they have a demo, so worth the read). SoftRAID can also import/convert an Apple RAID to its own format which has been known to recover drives and data.

Disk Utility gives error and does not rebuild mirrored RAID

After having a HDD fail on a mirrored RAID I replaced the HDD and attempted to rebuild. Disk Utility reports via Console that it can not find an Apple Boot partition to check size and then fails to repair the RAID. Details follow.
Mac OS X v.10.4.8 Server
Power Mac G3 (Blue & White)
512MB RAM
20GB ATA HDD – boot device on internal ATA bus
4x 160GB ATA HDDs - setup in RAID scheme on Sonnet ATA/133 PCI card
RAID configured using Mac OS X v.10.4.8's Disk Utility and is an Apple RAID version 2.
RAID scheme <from "diskutil checkRAID" cmd>:
Welcome to Darwin!
[myserver:~] myadminuser% diskutil checkRAID
RAID SETS
Name: Mirror_2
Unique ID: 5FF8AD5F-0892-482D-B430-C7069D63AFD2
Type: Mirror
Status: Online
Device Node: disk3
Apple RAID Version: 2
# Device Node UUID Status
0 disk0s3 1FB48B00-3E52-4C29-8F05-2ED8BDAE4544 Online
1 disk6s3 BF2E69C6-698E-4D6A-A2A9-FE8CDAD8A7B1 Online
Name: Mirror_1
Unique ID: B448A09D-EC10-41EE-BA45-4D4071A88EA5
Type: Mirror
Status: Degraded
Device Node: disk5
Apple RAID Version: 2
# Device Node UUID Status
1 disk2s3 09AD5705-CF67-48B3-8E31-79983BD4781A Online
0 disk4s3 23EB1952-8B18-4400-A6FE-22C2F707C097 Failed
Name: StorageRAID1
Unique ID: 2B8349AB-F553-4FD2-8440-C575791DA858
Type: Stripe
Status: Online
Device Node: disk7
Apple RAID Version: 2
# Device Node UUID Status
0 disk3 5FF8AD5F-0892-482D-B430-C7069D63AFD2 Online
1 disk5 B448A09D-EC10-41EE-BA45-4D4071A88EA5 Online
I configured this RAID scheme (two two drive mirrors striped together) according to this kbase document: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304377
As shown in the above "diskutil checkRAID" output I have a failed HDD. So I replaced the HDD with another 160GB cold spare. I added the new drive to the mirror "Mirror_1" also known as disk5 and hit rebuild. Received the normal message that all data on the new drive I was adding would be erased.
I then receive the following error immediately in the Console Log:
Rebuilding RAID "Mirror_1"
2006-12-15 23:50:24.741 DiskManagementTool [375] WARNING: Could not find Apple Boot partition to check it's size, skipping disk5s-1s.
Rebuilding RAID slice "disk4s3"
Just to stem some confusion, the device ID disk4s3 has been used by the system for both the old failed HDD and the new replacement HDD.
The result of this attempted rebuild is I end up with all the data from Mirror_1 on the new HDD but the new HDD is not successfully added to the RAID, therefore Mirror_1 is still degraded and my problem not resolved.
I ran the appropriate rebuild cmd from both the GUI Disk Utility as described and from the CLI "diskutil repairMirror disk5 disk4s3" but no joy.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. This volume houses a large amount of important data including user home directories so while some offline time may be required data loss would not be very acceptable.
Thanks in advance and I will be happy to provide more information as necessary.

I guess doing it in Terminal would fail too:
diskutil repairMirror disk5 disk4

Mirrored RAID taking too long for Data Rebuild

I have created a RAID 1 (Mirrored RAID) using Disk Utility in my Mac Pro. I have used 2 x 4TB WD Enterprise Grade HDDs. I copied 10 gb data on to this 4 TB RAID volume. Then removed one of the HDDs & installed in my other Mac Pro. It mounted as normal HDD & showed all the data that I had copied. To check if Disk Utility will rebuild the data, I deleted some part of this data (2 GBs out of 10 GBs) & installed this drive back in the system on which I had Created this RAID volume.
Initially I was surprised to find that Deleted data is now absent on this RAID volume. But on Launching Disk Utility it started rebuilding data on RAID volume.
BUT for Rebuilding 2 GB data estimated time shown by system was 9 hrs.
Is this NORMAL?
I intend to fill this 4 TB RAID volume with approximately 3.5 TB Data. In case one of the drive fails, how long should it take for Disk Utility to rebuild this amount of Data?
Is there any alternative way of speeding up this process?
Will Apple's RAID card help?
All your suggestions will be appreciated.
Thanks

I know this is an old thread but I'd be interested in what you came up with for a solution.
Here's my RAID journey thus far.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/25119317#25119317
Again, a gig of info and its taking 1 day 10 hours.
I hope theres a solution somewhere.
Drew

Mirrored RAID Failed

I have an xserve with three drives. Bay one is a regular single boot volume but bays 2 & 3 are a mirrored RAID pair. I got a flashing yellow light yesterday and ran Disk Utility. It showed the RAID pair as having an error. I ran First Aid and it now reports that the volume is OK but when I look at the RAID panel only one physical disk is listed. The volume still functions ok, the server is working fine and the yellow light is not flashing now - but I guess this means that I do not have a mirrored RAID pair anymore.
How should I go about returning my RAID to a mirrored pair? How can I identify which of the two physical disks has failed? (I don't want to pull out the wrong one!) Can I slot in a new disk and have it added into the RAID as a replacement?

Do you have a backup of that RAID?
If yes I would rebuild the RAID. From what you are saying I would not trust it any more. When you do that then you can test each disk by formating it and then trying to copy data to the drive. You can then see if one is not working right or if they both are fine.

Xserve - Mirrored RAID Failed? Degraded? Confused...

Hi,
Can anyone shed some light on this situation please? Disk utility tells me one thing and Server Monitor tells me another.
I have an X-Serve with 3 drives and a Mirrored RAID Set running 10.5.8.
Server Monitor is showing a yellow status for disk 1 and disk 2. Raid Status: Degraded (Mirror) Pre-failure Warning: No Warnings
Disk Utility on the other hand shows that the Mirrored RAID sets are Degraded because disk2s4 = Failed and disk2s2 = Failed.
Running disk utility commands in terminal also show disk2s4 and disk2s2 as Failed.
I have not yet tried to Rebuild or eject / reconnect the disk. The only thing I've really done is some research and rebooted the server.
It sounds like disk 2 has failed. Is there any way to confirm it's dead? Are there any serious risks of trying to rebuild?
Thanks.
- F4st

I'm not sure why you think you're seeing conflicting information…
Server Monitor is showing a yellow status for disk 1 and disk 2. Raid Status: Degraded (Mirror) Pre-failure Warning: No Warnings
OK, So Server Monitor says the RAID is in a degraded state…
Disk Utility […] shows that the Mirrored RAID sets are Degraded because disk2s4 = Failed and disk2s2 = Failed
Running disk utility commands in terminal also show disk2s4 and disk2s2 as Failed
I don't see this is anything different. All three methods are telling you disk2 has failed and your mirror is relying on disk1 for all activity.
Is there any way to confirm it's dead?
Umm.. you mean other than Server Monitor, Disk Utility.app and diskutil?
Face it, it's dead. It's had it.
Are there any serious risks of trying to rebuild?
Sure. If the disk is dead, it's entirely possible that rebuilding the array on that disk will fail. You run the risk of a problem on disk1 and then all your data is gone.
My advice: Replace disk2 as soon as possible. If not sooner.

Unable to rebuild in mirrored RAID after hard drive failure

I plan on getting a mirrored raid setup for my backups of all my work that I have done. I am currently testing out how the built in software RAID works in OSX.
I have setup a mirrored RAID with two flash drives and it works fine, i then tried to simulate if one of the disks were to fail by reformatting it, and then i tried to plug it back in to rebuild it, but it does not allow me to do so the rebuild button is greyed out. Could it be because i had the RAID setup as automatically rebuild? If someone could walk me through the process of rebuilding the raid setup that would be great, i would like to figure this out before purchasing the harddrives.

Awesome, this just saved my sanity, thank you!
I was about to go totally insane when I couldn't find the option to add a new drive to the existing RAID mirror and then rebuild the whole thing.
In the Apple help, it just says "go to RAID" "click rebuild" - but this is absolutely not how it works!
Adding the new, empty drive by drag and drop wasn't mentioned anywhere - in addition to that I have never seen a program that has certain functions which can only be accessed by drag and drop.
Also the hard disk utility doesn't look like drag and drop GUI at all.
It was really easy as soon as I read this thread, so thanks again, this totally saved my day!

MacMini Mirror RAID degradated, 2nd slice failed

I have a Mac Mini Server Late 2012, with the following specs:
- 2.3 GHZ I7
- 10 GB RAM (1x2 GB, 1x8 GB)
- Dual 1 TB HD 5.400 RPM
- OSX Maverick 10.9.5
- Mirror RAID
Apparently an error with OwnCloud caused the disk to get almost full. I found the problem, deleted the files and then ran disk utility and, for my surprise, I found the raid hd (serverhd) marked as "degradated" and the 2nd disk marked as "failed":
Running diskutil on terminal confirms that the 2nd slice as "failed":
My questions are:
1. Does the failed status on disk1s2 means that the disk PHYSICALLY failed or that the data in the disk doesn't match with the one in the 1st disk?
2. If this is a data failure, how can I rebuild the data in the 2nd disk? By selecting the failed disk in disk utility and hitting Rebuild?
TIA
Victor Espina

I finally solved this issue:
1. Made a full copy of server's HD in a external disk using CCC
2. Changed boot drive to use the external disk. In theory, this was not needed but I prefered to boot from a different disk just in case.
3. Once booted from the external disk, when to Disk Utility and "demote" the failed disk from the RAID array.
4. Using Disk Utility, I reformated the failed disk and added again to the RAID set (to do this, select first the RAID set and then drag & drop the disk from the left panel)
5. Once the disk was added to the RAID set, I pressed Rebuild and waited until de RAID set was rebuilt.
6. Then I set the HD as the boot drive and restarted the server
Thanks all for your help on this.
Victor Espina

Rebuilding a Mirrored Raid using Disk Utility

I have a mirrored raid set up via disk utility. For some reason one drive was switched off recently so the 2 drives are now out of sync. Disk utility now says the raid is 'Degraded' with one of the slices marked as 'failed'
I can ignore this as the drive appears fine on the desktop. But I need it to be working correctly as a fully operating RAID.
If I click 'rebuild' it gives a warning saying 'Rebuilding a RAID set will destroy all information on the replacement disk “RAID Slice”.
SO- I'm assuming rebuild will correct the error and make it work but I'm concerned about this warning about destroying data! I assume it will simply copy everything from Drive A to the 'degraded' Drive B??
Thanks for any suggestions.

"SO- I'm assuming rebuild will correct the error and make it work but I'm concerned about this warning about destroying data! I assume it will simply copy everything from Drive A to the 'degraded' Drive B??"
This should indeed be the way it goes but since i do not have enough experience with that kind or RAID setup i strongly suggest backing up / cloning drive A to an external before doing the rebuild... just in case.

Which hard drive to choose when a hard drive failed from mirrored raid

this is my mirrored raid set up from 4 ext HD to make a total of 2 mirrored ext HD raids. In one set, a HD is out of sync and has failed. I chose auto rebuild when I create the raids but it did not occurred. question-Which HD do I chose to rebuld when I use disk utility? Please see picture below. thank you.

any suggestion? or am i in the wrong discussion board.

Mirrored RAID degraded, upper slice shows "failed" but drive passes verify

Hello,
I have a mid 2010 Mac Mini running Mountain Lion and Server. The Mirrored RAID is showing degraded and that the upper slice has failed. However, doing a verify of the drive does not report any problems.
Is there a way to determine if this is just a RAID management issue? I've considered rebooting into single user mode and running fsck but not sure what else it will tell me?
Is it safe for me to click on the slice that is showing "failed" and hit rebuitd? (after verifying a good back up of course). I started down this path but didn't like the warning OS X provided; it was not crystal clear which physical drive it would erease the data from.
Thanks,
Tim

I meant to add that boot up reports:
AppleRAIDSet: addMember() detected expired sequenceNumber (1) for member _______big id_____
AppleRAID::restartSet - restarting set "Harddrive name" (______another big id_____)
CoreStorage: fsck_cs has finished for group " ______yet another big id________" with status 0x00
CoreStorageFamily::unlockVEKs) failed to unwrap the vek, status = e00002bc
- Tim

Degraded mirrored raid- won't rebuild

I've had 2 500 gig drives mirrored. When I set up the drives I did not check "automatically rebuild".
I just discovered ( not too long after installing Leopard) that one slice was "damaged" and the raid was degraded. I tried to rebuild, but got an error message that said disk utility was unable to recognize the filesystem. I finally erased the "damaged" drive, verified it and am ready to try rebuilding the set, but don't want to lose data from the remaining drive from the original raid.
How should I proceed?
Thanks-
Ford

Well I'm sure VERY few people have multiples of EVERYTHING. I still have my data.
All I want to do is mirror a fresh drive with the other drive that was part of a mirrored raid set. That should be possible... it seems...
Please don't admonish me for not having more backups. I have a total of 1.25 terabytes of HD space with a lot of redundancy.

Offline Disc In Degraded Mirrored RAID Set

I have a 2 disc (300GB each) mirrored RAID set that has worked fine up until recently. One slice appeared failed so I attempted to rebuild it. 7 hours later it still showed up as failed. I attempted a rebuild once more and the same result. I then shut everything down and re-booted my whole system. Now the RAID set is still degraded but the slice now shows up as offline as opposed to failed.
I checked the connections and it's all connected fine.
I have run First Aid several times and no repairs were necessary.
Anyway I can get this back 'online'?
If not, can I delete it, repair it and if it's repaired add it back to the RAID set?

It sounds like one of the drives in the mirrored set has lost its mind (i.e., failed).
This is exactly the situation Mirrored RAID is good for.
Remove the failed drive, insert your spare drive of the same or larger size, and assign it as a spare. Then you should be able to get the RAID to rebuild onto the spare and bring it up to date in the next half-a-day or so. Then the mirror will show as working again.
Make sure your Backup is up-to-date. A second failure now (before the array has rebuilt) will give you data loss.

Re-create a mirrored RAID after restoring backup

As a follow-up on my thread http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=833779&tstart=0 :
On a XServe G5 with OS X Server 10.4.8 and a two-drive mirrored RAID I do backups by cloning the RAID onto an other disk (in bay three) using Intego's Personal Backup X4.
Now it may happen that there is some kind of data loss or an other emergency case that urges me to boot from the cloned HD. I would do this by simply removing the HD in bay one and replacing it with the clone, then restart the server (second HD of the RAID1 remains in bay two).
The information I got until yet says that the mirrored RAID is then broken and needs to be completely re-build. Is this correct so far ? I originally assumed that the clone "remembers" that it was part of a RAID system before and rebuilds automatically with the second HD still in place. Very likely wrong ?
So if I need to rebuild the clone from scratch, which steps do I follow exactly ? As far as I understand I have two choices:
(1)
Via command line (as root): diskutil createRAID mirror <set name> Journaled HFS+ <device identifier disk1> <device identifier disk2>
<set name>: Would be volume name of the RAID to create, right ?
<device identifier disk1/2>: What is this and how to determine ?
(2)
Via disk utility: Select one disk (first line on the left disk/volume list, e.g. "76,2 GB Hitachi 123ABC"), click in "RAID" tab, do settings.
Then drag & drop each harddisk from the left to the right list (again, the first line of each disk entry). Finally creating the RAID by clicking at the button "Generate".
I'm not sure, although I would likely handle this with the disk utility, it appears easier to me using the diskutil command in terminal. But maybe I simply lack of explaining the GUI... let me know how to post images and I will add some screenshots here.
Well, if my proceedings are too complex and there is something easier, please let me know. I'm open for everything.

>This part of my question originally referred to the fact that when booting from the cloned backup in bay one while still having the second disk of the old RAID in bay two, it could occur that the OS rebuilds the RAID by using the data on the remaining mirror disk in bay two, couldn't ? This would be not desired, because the data on that disk would be no longer usable. So just for clarification, not that we have a misunderstanding in this point.
I see what you're getting at, and I don't believe it's an issue.
Given three disks, disk0, disk1 and disk2, where disk0 and disk1 are mirrored and that mirror fails, the OS will not rebuild the mirror using disk1 and any other disk. It won't arbitrarily choose any disk in the system to rebuild on - you have to specifically mark as disk as usable, either by enabling auto-rebuild and adding a spare disk to the array, or by using 'repairMirror' and specifying the disk to use.
In any case, if you reboot the system from disk2, there is no way it will rebuild the array using that disk since that disk is the active boot drive and can not be unmounted (which is necessary before being added to an array).
So, no, there is no chance that the system will auto-rebuild the working half of the mirror with your backup disk.
>Okay, let's summarize... I would follow this procedure in order to boot from the cloned backup and build a new RAID:
1. Remove both disks from the XServe.
2. Insert the cloned backup disk and boot.
3. Open terminal, su root, execute:
diskutil enableRAID disk0
diskutil repairMirror disk0 disk1
This is not correct.
When you 'enableRAID disk0' the OS will create a new, virtual disk (likely 'disk2'). This is the mirror array (currently consisting of only one drive), and it is this virtual disk that you need to specify as the mirror to be repaired.
So, given disk0 and disk1 as being the physical disks in the server, the steps are more likely to be:
<pre class=command>diskutil enableRAID disk0</pre>
(this creates a new, virtual disk2)
<pre class=command>diskutil repairMirror disk2 disk1</pre>
(this adds physical disk1 to the degraded mirror disk2)
When complete disk2 will be a mirror RAID consisting of disk0 and disk1.
>When using "diskutil enableRAID", I cannot determine the label of the RAID as I would do with "diskutil createRAID" (in command line manual this is referred to "setname"). Which setname does my "new" RAID system get, a default one ?
You know, I have no idea
I've never noticed this before. If I think about it, I'd guess that the setname is based on the source disk name.
>> If you add a drive to a RAID it gets reformatted, so it doesn't matter what's
on it.
Even if it was part of the RAID system before (the original disk in bay two) ? It could still have the RAID information on it and try to rebuild RAID when getting mounted, couldn't ?
No. See my comments above. The OS won't auto-rebuild unless a) the RAID is set to auto-rebuild and b) there is a spare disk in the array. If either of those two conditions are not true then the disk acts as a degraded mirror and can be reformatted/reallocated as you like.

Settinng up a mirrored raid with 2 80 gig HDs

This is my first time setting up an xServe. I know I need to set-up a mirrored raid with my 2 80 gig drives, but I also read that I should not place my other software on the same partition as the OS incase I need to ever perform a clean install. My question is do I need to purchase a 3rd drive module, or can I set-up a partition within the mirrored raid scenario? If so, how do I do this with the Disk Utility?
Dual 2.3GHz PowerPC G5 Mac OS X (10.4) Running Tiger Server

Dan Soderholm-
I don't think partitioning a RAID is bad in some situations as long as you are aware of the pitfalls.
First would be speed. If one partition held data and one held applications, the heads of the drive have to scramble between partitions in order to grab all of the data. This slows things down significantly in practice.
The second major problem is data loss. If something fails, you are losing more than one "drive" and must deal with the associated hassles of rebuilding everything. If you have a robust backup strategy you can mitigate the negative effects of this however.
Your theory bout getting into trouble and wiping the system partition can be another false sense of security. Nine times out of ten when something goes south you will be wiping the entire disk and starting from scratch, and usually after you have spent considerable time just trying to wipe the system partition. It always seems to be the partition information that gets wrecked.
Luck-
-DaddyPaycheck

Mirrorred RAID Rebuild Failing

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